15 Webtools in 15 Weeks

This video is from a series I taught for school districts. It is now available for free to subscribers of Ask a Tech Teacher:

Summary

Teach 15 internet tools over 15 weeks, engaging students in exploration and teaching, while fostering digital citizenship and problem-solving skills.

Highlights

• 🌟 Engaging Project: Students teach each other 15 internet tools, promoting excitement and exploration.
• 👩‍🏫 Student-Centered: Learners take charge, becoming teachers and sharing newfound knowledge with classmates.
• 🤝 Collaboration: Students work in groups, enhancing teamwork and communication skills.
• 📚 Digital Citizenship: Emphasis on safe online practices and fair use of content is integrated into lessons.
• 🛠️ Tool Selection: Teachers curate tools based on input from grade-level colleagues to ensure relevance.
• 📅 Flexible Timing: Each presentation takes 20-30 minutes, allowing for other curriculum activities.
• 🎉 Fun Wrap-Up: The project serves as an engaging end-of-year activity, keeping students motivated.

Key Insights

• 🌍 Empowering Learners: By allowing students to select and teach tools, they develop ownership of their learning process, fostering independence and confidence.
• 💡 Authentic Learning: Teachers learn alongside students, creating a shared experience that models lifelong learning and curiosity.
• 🎯 Academic Relevance: Integrating tools relevant to future grades ensures that students are prepared for academic expectations, enhancing their transition to the next level.
• 📈 Reflective Practice: Incorporating reflections into the project promotes metacognition, helping students understand their learning journey and areas for improvement.
• 🏆 Focused Assessment: Clear grading rubrics guide students in expectations and encourage high-quality presentations, emphasizing knowledge and teaching ability.
• 🌐 Resource Creation: Students build a library of resources for future classes, promoting a culture of sharing and collaboration within the school community.
• 🎊 Exciting Conclusion: The project culminates the school year on a high note, emphasizing creativity and student engagement, making learning enjoyable.

–summarized by NoteGPT

This video is from a series I taught for school districts. It is now available for free to Ask a Tech Teacher subscribers. Videos include (in alphabetic order): (more…)

STEM education–Science, technology, engineering, and math–sounds intimidating, but is actually one of the most satisfying learning experiences students can participate in. Makeblock (an Ask a Tech Teacher sponsor) has some excellent resources for this field. Today, we’ll discuss:

How Laser Cutter Brings New Inspiration to the Classroom

STEM education is the need of this modern era, which is why teachers look for some interesting ways to teach these subjects and skills. They try to find new activities, games, toys, tools, or anything that can engage students and help them learn without struggling.

A laser cutter can spark creativity among students. They can turn their imagination into reality, which gives them a sense of joy and pride. They can cut and engrave different types of materials and make products and items they like.

Students, as well as teachers, enjoy using a school laser cutter. It is a perfect option for K-12 schools, colleges, universities, DIY enthusiasts, artists, professionals, etc. It is completely safe and easy to use in schools and has the capability to turn learning into fun.

In this article, we will explain the benefits of using a laser cutter for education. We explore what students can make with the machine to uncover their creativity and develop various skills. Moreover, we will also share an ideal laser cutter for schools that empowers students to take their skills to the next level safely and easily. (more…)

Reinforce fiction writing–characters, plot, setting, climax–with a short story in MS Word or another word processing tool. Then use color, borders, and pictures to enhance the words. Click the images below for larger sizes. Designed for grades 2-7: (more…)

What’s the first thing you think of when I say, Excel? Numbers, right–turning data into information. That is Excel’s ‘killer app’, but the ingenious human brain has come up with another striking use for Excel: Drawing. I spent a long time trying to find a lesson that taught drawing in Excel, finally gave up and created my own” (more…)

Graphing is an important skill for students whether they go to college after High School or start a career. It teaches:

1. Visualization and Understanding: Graphing helps students visually represent data, functions, and relationships. This visual representation often aids in understanding complex concepts that may be difficult to grasp through purely symbolic or verbal explanations.
2. Problem Solving: Graphs provide a way to solve problems and make predictions. Whether it’s analyzing trends in data, finding optimal solutions in optimization problems, or understanding the behavior of functions, graphing is a valuable tool for problem-solving.
3. Communication of Ideas: Graphs provide a universal language for communicating ideas across different fields. Whether in mathematics, science, economics, or engineering, graphs are commonly used to convey information in a concise and understandable manner.
4. Critical Thinking: Interpreting graphs requires critical thinking skills. Students learn to analyze and interpret data, identify patterns and trends, and make inferences based on the information presented in the graph.
5. Preparation for Higher Education and Careers: Graphing skills are fundamental in many higher education disciplines and careers. Whether students pursue studies in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), social sciences, or business, they will likely encounter situations where graphing skills are essential.
6. Technology Proficiency: With the prevalence of graphing software and tools, teaching graphing also involves teaching students how to effectively use technology to create and analyze graphs. This proficiency in using graphing software is beneficial in both academic and professional settings.
7. Promoting Creativity: Graphing can be a creative process, particularly when students are tasked with representing data or functions in innovative ways. Encouraging creativity in graphing assignments can make the learning process more engaging and enjoyable for students.

I start students in 2nd grade with a spreadsheet program. Here are some of the lessons I teach (available for free on Ask a Tech Teacher): (more…)

Before you start this project, you might want to visit How to KidPix I and How to KidPix II.

There are a lot of graphic art options for youngers. We choose KidPix because it is user friendly, easily understood, and doesn’t clutter up the screen with anything other than what new graphic artists need.

(more…)

Here are eleven fun Valentine sites to fill those few minutes betwixt and between lessons, projects, bathroom breaks, lunch, and everything else (click here for updates on this list):

1. Drag-and-drop games
2. Google Drawings Magnetic Poetry from Ctrl Alt Achieve
3. Games and puzzles
4. ‘I love you’ in languages Afrikaans to Zulu
5. Match
6. Puppy jigsaw
7. Rebus game
8. Sudoku
9. Tic-tac-toe
10. Typing
11. Write in a heart

Do you use any I missed? If you’re looking for more, here’s my collection of holiday lesson plans, easily adaptable to Valentine’s Day.

(more…)

This is one of the most popular lessons I teach to Excel beginners. It is relevant, instantly usable and makes sense from the beginning. Before you start this one, you might want to complete Project 70 and 71.

–from 55 Technology Projects for the Digital Classroom

–image credit Deposit Photos

Here’s the sign-up link if the image above doesn’t work:

https://forms.aweber.com/form/07/1910174607.htm

---

Copyright ©2024 worddreams.wordpress.com – All rights reserved.

“The content presented in this blog is the result of my creative imagination and not intended for use, reproduction, or incorporation into any artificial intelligence training or machine learning systems without prior written consent from the author.”

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

In honor of Martin Luther King:

MLK Day in the US is the third Monday of January, this year, January 15, 2024.

Ask a Tech Teacher’s 19-page two-lesson plan bundle to teach about Martin Luther King (click for more information) is

66% off January 12, 2024 through Jan. 15, 2024.

Lesson plans include:

• • • • an Event Chain of Dr. King’s impact on American history (adaptable to other historical events)
      • interpreting his words with a visual organizer

(more…)

Use this not only to create a gift for parents, but to practice writing skills, grammar, MS Word’s spell check. I have student compose the memory one week and we format it the next. For beginning writers, use KidPix and its text tools.   –from 55 Technology Projects for the Digital Classroom (more…)